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by zozbot234 2349 days ago
Adblockers have to solve that problem already. And it's actually really easy because "ads" aren't just ads unfortunately, they're also third-party code that's trying to track you as you browse the site. So it's reasonably easy to spot them and filter them out.
1 comments
thrwaway69 2349 days ago
Though, advertisers are already using first party redirection. Future of adblockers is bleak.

https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/780/

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dredmorbius 2349 days ago
Back in the early days of banner ads, a CSS-based approach to blocking was to target images by size. Since advertising revolved around specific standards of advertising "units" (effectively: sizes of images), those could be identified and blocked. That worked well, for a time.

This is ultimately whack-a-mole. For the past decade or so, point-of-origin based blockers have worked effectively, because that's how advertising networks have operated. If the ad targets start getting unified, we may have to switch to other signatures:

- Again, sizes of images or DOM elements.

- Content matching known hash signatures, or constant across multiple requests to a site (other than known branding elements / graphics).

- "Things that behave like ads behave" as defined by AI encoded into ad blockers.

- CSS / page elements. Perhaps applying whitelist rather than blacklist policies.

- User-defined element subtraction.

There's little in the history of online advertising that suggests users will simply give up.

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thrwaway69 2349 days ago
Some of those techniques will make the whole experience slow compared to the current network request filters and dns blockers.

And that will probably be blocked or severely locked down by your most popular browser, chrome.

I don't need to give advertisers data myself when someone else I know can. I really doubt it is easy to throw off chrome monopoly at this stage. I presume we will see a chilling effect before anything moves like IE.

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dredmorbius 2349 days ago
At this point, I'll take slow over shitshow.
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LargoLasskhyfv 2349 days ago
That is fixed since 1.24.3b7 / https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases ?
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